Debrah Morris - When Lightning Strikes Twice

Fifteen compressions, two breaths. Mallory performed the cycle over and over. After four unbelievably long minutes, she heard him gasp in a breath. Color gradually seeped back into his face, but she still couldn’t detect a pulse.

“Come on back, Mitchum.” Mouth-to-mouth was no longer required, so she straddled her patient for better leverage. The change of position gave her tired arms a respite. Counting aloud, she rocked forward with each cycle of compressions. Keep breathing, you stupid son of…don’t die on me. Being only human, it occurred to her that his death would be no great loss to the world. In fact, his untimely end might have been ordained by a higher power.

The thought shocked and sickened her. What was she thinking? She was a doctor who’d sworn an oath to save lives, no matter how wasted that life might be. And what about little Chloe? The child needed a father. The poor kid had the rotten luck to be stuck with a lousy one, but Joe was only thirty years old. He still had time to turn his life around and make something of himself.

If he lived.

“Come back to me, dammit.” Grimly determined and focused on her task, Mallory lost track of time as the rain pelted down, soaking her cotton blouse and khaki slacks, and plastering her hair against her head. She’d never administered one-man CPR in a real life-or-death situation, and the extended effort tightened her muscles into hot knots. She sighed with relief when the shrieking ambulance siren wailed in the distance.

The unconscious man probably couldn’t hear, but she spoke to him anyway. “Hold on, Joe. The paramedics are coming. If you can make it to the hospital, you have a chance. Hang in there for Chloe. Don’t die.”

Please, God, don’t let him die. It was a plea and a prayer. She only hoped Someone was listening.

His eyes fluttered open. During his last life as a Texas Ranger, Will Pendleton had sure enough woke up in some pretty strange places. Border town bordellos. Fancy Fort Worth hotels. Gulf-front flophouses. He’d even come to at the bottom of a dry well once after a gang of drunken malfeasants had knocked him out and thrown him down the hole. Plenty of times, he’d awakened with nothing but the wide blue sky over his head and the cold ground beneath him. The best place for a man to wake up was in a sweet woman’s arms, but in his line of work, he’d learned to be alone.

His skin bristled like a nervous colt’s. It was one thing to wake up in a strange place. Waking up in a strange body was a whole new experience.

When his blurred vision cleared, the only thing familiar was the color of his surroundings. Everything was white. Besides his own, there were five other beds in the room. All held forms draped with white sheets and attached to contraptions that made noises like birds trying to chirp.

He lifted his head for a better look-see, but it flopped weakly onto the pillow. Two women, dressed in blue pajamas like the Chinese laundryman used to wear, tended the folks in the beds. He heard their murmuring voices, but couldn’t make out what they said. Their soft, white shoes made no sound on the floor.

He tried to move, but he was hog-tied by some kind of cord that ran from a needle taped to the inside of his elbow to a bag of clear liquid suspended from a metal pole. A fancy clothes-peg attached to another cord clamped painlessly on the end of his finger. He examined the hand. Long-fingered, callused and sun-brown, it had obviously belonged to a hardworking man.

Where was he? Had the transference been completed? It was possible he hadn’t returned at all, but was stuck in yet another corner of Reception, still awaiting a routing assignment. The thought that he might not have made it back to earth—back to his precious Molly—filled him with aching sadness.

He wouldn’t get another chance. Celestian had barely explained the possibility of walking-in when an appropriate mortal coil had been vacated. At the right time. In the right location. He wasn’t too clear on events after that. Everything had happened fast. So fast the time-out monitor had little opportunity to give instructions, issue cautions or provide historical updates. He only knew one thing for sure. Due to another stunning accident, the spirit inhabiting the mortal coil known as Joe Mitchum had alighted unexpectedly in Reception, his life over and his number up.

In her assigned role as healer, Molly, or Mallory as she was now called, had persevered until she revived the uninhabited coil. According to Celestian, the resident spirit had given up first reenter rights, electing to remain in the Reception queue in hopes of receiving a better assignment.

That’s when things had gotten really lively. Celestian started squawking about how they only had a small window of opportunity during which another spirit could take over, if Mallory succeeded in snatching the coil back from the brink of permanent death. He hadn’t been blowing smoke when he said he’d do anything, take any form, to go back. He had snatched the walk-in opening without considering the implications. Like a baseball player who had spent a hundred seasons on the bench—during which all the rules had changed—he was unexpectedly thrust back in the game.

At least he hoped that’s what had happened.

Thankfully, he’d observed Molly/Mallory often enough on the spirit monitor to know some of the details of her Molly life. In 1973, at age ninety-seven, she’d passed over quietly in her sleep. She had returned as Mallory, born later the same year to a hard-working local couple. Because memories of past jaunts were mercifully deleted before reentry, Mallory recalled nothing of Molly’s existence or any of the other lives she’d lived.

That was the way it had to be.

Oh, yeah. He knew something else. Celestian had emphasized this was the last chance for his warrior spirit and her healer spirit to unite. They would not share the rest of these lives, nor would they be allowed to spend eternity as mates, unless she fell in love with him this time around.

That, too, was the way it had to be.

Another half-formed memory floated into his thoughts. Celestian had yelled something just before he’d been sucked into the new coil. What was it? Thinking only made his head hurt worse, but he had to remember. Celestian had been so danged insistent, it must have been important. He closed his eyes, concentrating until the monitor’s words came back to him.

Yeah. He could never tell Molly/Mallory who he really was, or reveal any details of their past lives together. It was against the rules.

That was the way it had to be.

The fact that Molly was Mallory, and he was now Joe complicated things. What if she didn’t recognize him? She might not even like him. Uncertainty gnawed at him, and he calmed his fears by telling himself it shouldn’t be too difficult to win Mallory’s heart. Not after all they’d been through together. Not after all the lifetimes they’d shared.

When he moved, pain ricocheted through his body and settled in his sore, bandaged feet. Being cooped up in the cooler with that ornery hombre Celestian for a hundred years had been a trial. Getting a ticket home had been nothing short of a miracle. Lying still when he wanted to crawl off the bed and search for the woman who would help him fulfill his destiny by fulfilling her own? That required every shattered bit of his willpower.

He tried to relax. The hard part of this trip was behind him. Charming Dr. Mallory Peterson into falling in love with him again, even after a lifetime apart, would be simple.

As easy as eating pie.

He must have nodded off for a while, because when he awoke again one of the pajama-clad women was fussing around the machinery by his bed.

“There you are, Mr. Mitchum. You’re back.”

“Am I?” Dry and raw at the same time, his throat was so sore he couldn’t make spit or speak above a whisper. “Am I still in Reception?”

“Oh, no, sir. You’re in the ICU.”

He groaned in frustrated agony. Why couldn’t people call things by their proper names? “What is this place?”

“The hospital. You had an accident. Don’t you remember?”

“Not much. Who are you?”

“I’m Kathy. I’ll be your nurse tonight.” She smiled and wrapped a heavy cloth tightly around his upper arm, squeezing a small bulb until it tightened uncomfortably. After a few seconds, she released the bulb. “Your blood pressure is almost normal. How do you feel?”

“Like I’ve been lightning-struck.”

She patted his arm. “I’m not surprised. Take it easy now, the doctor will be in to see you soon.”

“Is that Mol—er, Mallory?” The name didn’t feel as strange coming out of his mouth as he thought it would. “Is she here?”

“You mean Dr. Peterson? I don’t know. Would you like to see her?”

“Yes.” A rush of emotion tightened his damaged throat and threatened to cut off his breathing again. “Please.” He’d waited a hundred years for this moment. Mallory Peterson looked nothing like his former fiancée, midwife Molly Earnshaw. Nor did her appearance match any of the other mortal coils she’d inhabited over time. Still, he couldn’t wait to see her. From tribal bonesetter to medieval herbalist to village wise woman, she’d always been a healer. Now she was a doctor. She’d finally reached the goal she’d yearned after so long.

The nurse picked up his wrist, felt his hammering pulse, frowned and wrote something on a paper clamped to a board. “I don’t know if Dr. Peterson is still in the building, she may have gone home by now.”

“No!” Not seeing her would hurt more than the injuries he’d suffered.

“Okay, calm down. I’ll have her paged. Maybe she’s still around.”

“Thank you. Please, just find her.”

The woman tucked the sheet around him. “You rest, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“I have to see her,” he whispered tightly. He had to. He couldn’t wait another moment.

“It was the darnest thing I ever saw.” After changing into clean green surgical scrubs, Mallory sat in the doctor’s lounge with a cup of coffee. She related the evening’s events to Andrew “Mac” McKinley, the on-call physician who’d taken charge of Joe in the emergency room. “I’m telling you, that fork of lightning hit the pole like a heat-seeking missile. It was almost as though it had made a special trip down from heaven, specifically to strike him.”

Mac shook his head. “I’m surprised at you, Mal. That’s not a very scientific explanation for someone with an undergrad major in physics.”

“I know, but it was still pretty amazing.”

“What’s amazing is the fact he’s still alive. You saved his life, you know.”

“I did, didn’t I?” She grinned. “That’s what we’re here for, right? Mallory Peterson’s my name, saving lives is my game.”

“Are you planning to hang around until our patient wakes up?”

“I’m thinking about it.” Mac was an excellent physician. She had no reservations about handing off Joe’s care. Yet, she felt responsible for the man whose heart had resumed beating under her hands. She’d insisted on riding to Midland in the ambulance with him and had assisted in the initial assessment. She didn’t understand, and couldn’t explain to her colleague, the indefinable connection she felt for the man she’d brought back from death.

“Inconsiderate of him to get toasted on a Friday night,” Mac teased. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“No. I’ll just see how he’s doing before I go.”

“Suit yourself.”

Mallory was relieved when he didn’t chide her about her absentee social life. That would have to wait, until she’d proved to the town that their faith in her had not been misplaced. Too bad time was finite. A limited resource, it ran out. Got used up. Squandered. Every life was allotted a certain number of minutes, and they were too precious to waste. She’d already spent an inordinate amount of her allotted time pursuing her dream.